I’ve finally caught up on just enough sleep to maybe be able to give some half coherent reflections on last weekend. Just like last year, it was all around awesome. The Reason Rally and the American Atheists Convention were both incredible, but when you’re in a crowd of a few hundred versus a crowd in the thousands or tens of thousands, it’s a little more intimate, and that can be good. If you want an overall assessment, Wesley provided a good one on Monday.

I’m going to focus on what made this one different than the other ones for me, and that’s the fact that I was one of the speakers. When I took to the stage I opened with:

The last time I had a live audience this large I invoked the spirit to calm my nerves, this time I’m imbibing spirits to get the job done. I can say wholeheartedly that this method is much more effective.

One thing that was unfortunate was some technological issues. I started off with showing some videos, but unfortunately my little netbook just doesn’t have enough power to draw a slide show on both screens and play videos on both screens and I figured this out shortly before the evening session began. So I had to put the slide show on hold and play the videos separately. I’m thinking that it may be worth it to get an Ultrabook once the Ivy Bridge chips come out and the Linux kernel developers have enough time to support it.

Having the opportunity to put those skills I had spent five years developing to good use was incredible. It was a little rough at first and I botched my opener, but after I got some laughs, I calmed down and the rest was awesome. I even had an American Sign Language interpreter (accessibility rules!) and asked her before hand to give me a dirty look if I used any “ums”. When I asked her about it later, she didn’t remember any. I’m hoping that my own shock a couple of weeks ago was enough to break myself again of the use of that damn filler.

The feedback I’ve gotten was probably a bit sugar coated, but it was at least awesome for me. I spent a lot of time and energy developing these skills. I took a total of four speech classes (three were specifically preaching classes) and took advantage of every opportunity I could, even driving three hours away just to preach. Letting those skills waste away over the last few years has been a little painful to say the least and hopefully I don’t have to wait another four and a half years for my next opportunity, big or small.

The differences between preaching and speaking at an atheist conference are also quite interesting. While emotionally manipulative methods are the preferred mode for a sermon (and one I never liked), they wouldn’t go well with an audience of the skeptics. Atheists are also a lot less judgmental. Even if they were to argue with you about every last thing you said, they wouldn’t think of you as being the wicked spawn of Satan. But, probably the best difference is that I was able to drink before and during my presentation.

Then on Sunday, while we were waiting for Dawkins and company to arrive, I saw a short bearded man walking across the campus who looked a little familiar. Then when I saw the group he was with inside, I was quiet pleased to see Jerry Dewitt and Sara Morehead from Recovering from Religion, Teresa MacBaine from the Clergy Project and the Agnostic Pastor blog, and Rich and Deanna Joy Lyons from the Living After Faith podcast.

Then when it came time for book signing. Sean Faircloth saw my “speaker” name tag and asked me what I spoke about. That was awesome!